City intent on developing AT&T Center’s corridor

Dreams of development around the AT&T Center haven’t materialized since the arena was opened before the 2002-03 Spurs season, but it wasn’t unmet for lack of vision or effort.

For about six years, developer Mark Granados tried to find a way to build something near the AT&T Center on the city’s East Side. About a year ago, he threw in the towel.

Around 2005, Granados first inquired about possibly building a commercial project around the Freeman Coliseum and using the facility’s parking lot. The idea didn’t gain much traction.

A few years ago, talk about a commercial corridor filled with restaurants, hotels and entertainment venues moved to a 25-acre stretch along AT&T Parkway. Again, Granados took a crack at it, but what was envisioned for the area wasn’t economically feasible.

“(The city) wanted to see ESPN Zone, high-end restaurants and high-end hotels,” said Granados, principal and founder of GFR Development Services. “And I came back with a plan for a three-story Red Roof Inn and Whataburger because that’s what the market supports.

“In a booming market, it would have been almost impossible,” added Granados, who is optimistic someone can develop a viable project there. “In the market we’ve been in the last three to four years, with the economy, in general, just stalled out, man, you’re talking about the Hail Mary of all Hail Mary’s.”

But the city isn’t quitting. On the other side of the golf course, there are plans to turn the Red Berry Estate into a mixed-use project.

The city bought the 84-acre property in June for $2.25 million. Later this month, the city will solicit proposals from developers, and a private partner could be in place by late summer, said Lori Houston, director at the Center City Development Office. A project there could be the catalyst needed to bring people and investment to an otherwise isolated industrial area.

“(Early plans) were for fast food and limited service, and the timing wasn’t right,” she said. “So we feel the Red Berry estate provides the opportunity for us to create more opportunities along that corridor.”

Still, developers aren’t convinced anything will ever crop up around the arena, which was thought to be the economic generator that would revitalize the area.

“If there was going to be development there, it would have happened already,” said Chuck Siegel, president of the commercial real estate firm Rohde, Ottmers & Siegel Realty.

Siegel added that it was a mistake not to put the arena downtown.

“We probably lost 10 to 20 years of impact,” he said.

As the area’s biggest draw, the Spurs aren’t enough to support investment there, even with the rodeo, other events and talk about a streetcar line, said Ernest Brown, executive vice president and managing director for the San Antonio division of commercial real estate firm Newmark Grubb Knight Frank.

“The problem is, the Spurs by themselves are not a big enough economic generator,” Brown said. “Economic generation goes where the jobs are and where it’s convenient and easy. When you artificially plop something like the AT&T Center out in the middle of an industrial area, it’s not in itself going to revitalize the area.”